cronch

— It seemed she was much occupied by her devotional services as was suggested by the sound of the cronch and the ringing of the bells every day.

— Or on a Sunday afternoon, if I chanced to be at home, I heard the cronching of the snow made by the step of a long-headed farmer, who from far through the woods sought my house, to have a social “crack;” one of the few of his vocation who are “men on their farms;” who donned a frock instead of a professor’s gown, and is as ready to extract the moral out of church or state as to haul a load of manure from his barn-yard.

— Only another rock grappled and swung out, and the cronch, cronch of the shovels again.